Expert: Acts of violence often planned; not suddenly triggered

Tuesday

Jul 24, 2012 at 12:01 AM

When a person goes on a violent shooting or killing rampage targeting innocent people, the public wants to know why.

By Stephanie TaylorStaff Writer

When a person goes on a violent shooting or killing rampage targeting innocent people, the public wants to know why.Saying that someone “snapped” is often used to explain the unthinkable, but that's rarely the case, said retired FBI agent Charlie Dorsey.Police say that James Holmes, the man accused of killing a dozen people and wounding 58 last week at the midnight premiere of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., had planned the spree for months. Police say he had purchased and trained with weapons and protective tactical gear, and had rigged his apartment with explosives.“That's not snapping,” said Dorsey, who was one of a handful of profilers specially trained to work on child abduction, child murder and serial killer investigations before becoming the special agent in charge of the Tuscaloosa bureau. “That's putting together a plan and going forward with specific steps and actions in furtherance of that plan. That's not somebody who woke up that morning and said, ‘Today's the day.' ”The Colorado rampage occurred two days after a Northport man wounded 18 people in a shooting spree that started at a Northport home and continued at The Copper Top, a downtown Tuscaloosa bar located in Temerson Square.Nathan Van Wilkins, 44, has been charged with 18 counts of attempted murder and two counts of shooting into an occupied building in that shooting spree.On Monday, he had a preliminary hearing set for 9 a.m. on Sept. 7 at the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse. He remains in the Tuscaloosa County Jail on $2 million bail and is being represented by a public defender. At least two of the 18 Tuscaloosa victims remained at DCH Regional Medical Center on Monday. Mario Fritz Winkler was in serious condition and Renardo Jackson was in good condition, said DCH spokesman Brad Fisher. No information about Bruce Bankhead, who was shot at the home in Northport, was available.Tuscaloosa police would not give a specific motive for the shootings. They said, however, that Wilkins had recently been fired from his job. Court records also show that he had financial problems and had filed for bankruptcy in 2011, the third time since 1991.No two cases can be compared, Dorsey said, but there are often similarities when people embark on a shooting or killing spree. Such people often feel hopeless and powerless about their lives. “They look around at other members of society who appear to be satisfied with their work, their careers and in loving relationships,” he said. “None of these suspects have any of that. They feel like the only ‘positive' thing they can do is something like this. It's a way to exert some type of control — they feel they have some type of power when committing the atrocities that they do.”Another common thread is that the shooters rarely plan past the point of the act.“These guys at this point have surrendered to society,” Dorsey said. “They know that their options are to kill, be killed themselves or stay in prison for the rest of their lives. A lot of times, the individual will stay at the scene, give themselves up or try for ‘suicide by cop'.”Police have said that Wilkins expected to be killed by police in Temerson Square after The Copper Top shootings. He allegedly eluded officers overnight before walking into a FedEx store in Jasper to turn himself in less than 12 hours later.“The minute we entered the FedEx door, this guy threw his hands straight up in the air and said, ‘I'm the guy you're looking for. I shot all those people in Tuscaloosa,' ” said Jasper Police Capt. Larry Cantrell. “ ‘I wanted Tuscaloosa police to kill me, but I got scared and left before they got there.' ”Dorsey didn't speak specifically about the Wilkins case because it is ongoing, but he did applaud Tuscaloosa Police and the other agencies that responded to the shooting and conducted the follow-up investigation. “This is a situation that's impossible to train for,” he said. “They're to be commended for a job well-done for stopping something that could've gotten much, much worse.” Such events often seem to come out of the blue, he said, because the shooters are often loners and isolated from those who could pick up warning signs. But those signs are often there, Dorsey said, when digging into a person's past. “You often see a continuum of behavior. You look back over the years and you see certain types of actions,” he said.